You know, as I was reinstalling Bryce, and making new zipfile backups of all my images and mats and presets and objects, I realized something. Aside from the fact that Bryce's render engine is amazing, except for that fricking horizon line, Bryce has to have the most complex and best materials system of anything I've seen. Depending on what you download from the web, and what you make yourself, Bryce offers more materials than any other program. The material editor may not be as complex as 3DS Max say, but it's pretty damn good as well. I kept track of my mats as I was backing them up, and I have something like 300 megs of mats alone. The thing is, and no, I'm by no means all that good at it yet, it's your texturing that gives your pictures a sense of reality. It's well worth spending a couple of hours to tweak a texture if it makes your scene look real. Sometimes I hut it, sometimes I don't. But take a look at the picture mutant babies in a jar in my gallery. I hit it there and that texture is about as real as you can get. Other times what I get looks like crap. People see Bryce and they think landscapes. Personally, I think where Bryce really shines is when you're doing close up, well textured pictures that don't involve landscapes at all. Bryce, in general, isn't terribly respected in the 3D world. But I think if you do good work, it's not going to matter what program you used. And I have seen Bryce used on record covers, ads, on TV, a lot of places. I also think, however, that people take it too lightly. It's a complex program that I think probably takes a year or two to really learn to use well, just like any other 3D program on the market. Now if Corel would just add a few tweaks to allow total modeling in Bryce, we could go out and kick some big time ass.

I am with you Bone.I think that Bryce is the greatest and if Corel can add to Bryce the ability to allow modeling like in other progs as well as export of Bryce native models..ie primatives and groups they would be on a really path to giving other programs a run for their money. Although I have to admit after playing with the Vue demo I was kind impressed by it's ability to capture more realism in landscape scenes than Bryce often can...I still love Bryce. Horribly long render time though there be at times :) Regards Eshal

Well, I'm impressed with Vue, but I think Bryce could equal it. The problem is getting good foliage models and textures. The best ones are such huge files you can maybe put one or two in a scene and then yer pretty much over the limit. If Corel could tweak the render engine without changing the look of it, I think that problem could be easily solved too.

I think you guys have got it right: material does make the object as much as form does, and Bryce's material editor is the most versatile I've seen--Max included. Yes, Bryce does need some basic modeling capabities, at the very least at the vertex level where you could approxomiate some shapes. Lastly I have no personal experience with Vue, only the images created with it that are posted, I too am impressed, but I have the say that Bryce has most of the pieces to be one of the finest 3D products out there, it just needs some tweaking, rearranging and a few extra bricks in the wall. My personal wish would be for some elemtary modelling capabilities, the abiltiy to apply more than one material to different parts of an object, and last but not least, something that approximates radiosity rendering.

I looked everywhere and tried heaps of demo and freeware modelers but none gave me the ease of manipulation of elements that Bryce does. Infact they just confused me to the point of major agravation :) So I'm sticking to Bryce for now and when I finally get the stuff done someone else is welcome to convert them lol

Don't forget the sky lab! A well made sky, IMHO, can make or break a Bryce image. Even if the sky isn't visible in the final render it will still set the overall tone of the image with how light, shadow and colors react. Then add in some carefully made textures (the DTE rocks!) and a simplistic image can become a show stopper. Sarah

Well you all know my feelings of Bryce, I Love it. mlofrano the abiltiy to apply more than one material to different parts of an object You "Can" do this in the materials editor by ctrl/clicking on the second and third columns in a channel. this will apply textures to different parts of an object Hawkfyr

Well you all know my feelings of Bryce, I Love it. mlofrano the abiltiy to apply more than one material to different parts of an object You "Can" do this in the materials editor by ctrl/clicking on the second and third columns in a channel. this will apply textures to different parts of an object Hawkfyr

I agree with you all. I have been using Bryce for about 2 years now and have recently rediscovered it after putting it away for a while while tring other programs and I must say for ease of usablility and diversity it can't be beat. Although I do agree that it definitly needs some sort of modeler like splines etc. All in all it's a powerful program that can only get better and will if the folks at Corel take developing this program to it's full potential to heart. Michael =)

Yep, the sky lab rocks. I think if Corel was wise, they'd hire Eric Wenger to redesign Bryce for the Bryce 5 release. Leave the stuff alone that's already good, tweak the render engine a bit and add some modeling capabilities. It couldn't be that hard to create a basic new window plug in that would at least give spline, extrude and lathe modeling capabilities.

Hi, yep, I agree. Bryce is very versatile and its fun, to play with the materials. (Bone: You can easily get rid of that disturbing horizon-line, when setting haze to zero and by selecting its appropriate color. Done :-) Hubert

hawkfyr * I know that you can assign more than one material to the ENTIRE object, but I didn't know you could assign seperate materials to SEPERATE portions of the SAME object that are not composed of multiple meshes. Please educate me.

Hi mlofrano, you know how you put the beans in the colums to drive the channels? well if you ctrl/click on the 2nd and 3rd columns, you can use multiple "material comonents"(up to 3) to drive any "material channel". I belive the "A" column is mapped to the top of the object. the "B" column is mapped to the bottom of the object. and the"C" column, blends the "A" and "B" columns.(in world space) The "D"column does not participate in this feature also: Try using different Mapping modes(object space,parametric,ect), and tweak the frequency/ scaleing/ and rotation .to modify the orientations of the material components. let me know if you need any help Hope this helps. Hawkfyr

Hawkfyr, Well thank you so much. I have used multiple materials to drive other channels but did not realize it works as you said. Who'd a thunk it? Again, thank you.

Hawfyr is da man lol

Hello Hawkfyr, Yes, I am having a bit of a problem. I drove 3 textures thru the ambient/diffuse channel seperately and in combination. I tried varying mapping methods, i.e., parmaetric, world space etc, but it seem all three textutures were mapped globaly throghout the object rather then in seperate zones so that it appeared the three materials were overlayed over the entire object. I used a simple sphere for my experiment. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks so much.

Hi Mlofrano See the new thread entitled "Material Editor" Above. Hawkfyr